by J. L. Wood
There were no buttons on the elevator, which puzzled Missy. Guess this is a one-way stop, she thought as the last person boarded. The clear doors closed and the lift slowly ascended. The section of the cylinder nearest the docking station had solid metal walls, while the remainder was clear glass save for a few floors. Her imagination wandered at the thought of what was hidden beyond the closed-off space, and she eventually settled on the idea of equipment to run the station.
The elevator stopped just a few floors past the shuttered area, the people beside her pushing their way out while Missy stared off into the distance at the stars from her new home. She could see planets in the distance and began to feel dizzy from the open space, making her feel as if she were floating.
The elevator dinged, an indication for her to get off, so she grabbed her luggage and entered the main floor, stepping into an active lounge. Dozens of people were either sitting or drinking, connecting. There were several televisions and couches, including a staffed bar. Instinctively, she began walking toward the bar but then decided against it. She needed to get settled then inquire about Don.
Unsure of where to go, she continued to follow the crowd, which led her to another set of elevators, this one with actual floor numbers. Looking at her card, Missy chose floor six, which led her to a nearly open space with several areas sectioned off between the spokes to the outer ring. The middle of the room was clear, but each section of the six areas between the spokes served a purpose. There were two sitting areas equipped with couches and chairs, two dining areas, a small kitchen area equipped with a food counter, and a very small shop with basic essentials. Above the corridors were numbers to the living quarters, and Missy entered the corridor that led to rooms 600 to 619.
The corridor to the outer ring was nearly as long as the one in the docking station. By the time she reached her room, she was exhausted and couldn’t wait to sit down. It wasn’t until Missy opened her door that she realized she had never been given a key.
Well, that’s safe, she thought as she entered the dark room, leaving her luggage just inside the doorway.
Missy searched for the light switch and flicked it on, revealing a small loft apartment, the outermost wall a large curved glass pane that provided a full view of space. Thick black privacy curtains hung at its side, but she could not envision herself ever using them with such a beautiful view. She looked out the window at a large black-and-silver planet. That must be Greu 9b, she thought, taking in its beauty.
The main portion of the room contained a loveseat, coffee table, and projection screen mounted to the wall. The floor beyond the main room was slightly raised, with a desk and single chair to the far left and a queen-sized bed on the right with a thick purple-and-gray quilt. The entire room followed the same theme: dark grays with purple accents. Beyond the wall of the projection screen, in front of the bed, was a door to a small bathroom equipped with a shower. It was cozy but enough for two people.
Missy continued to walk around the room, finding a small closet with accordion doors near the couch. She opened it and found several sets of women’s and men’s clothes, all gray with purple stripes down the sides. A patch that read Amity Station 2 was on the front-left breast. “So that’s what that was,” she whispered as she ran her finger over the smooth patch.
She continued to examine the room, admiring its quality and detail. When she reached the bed, she found a small pamphlet on the nightstand. She plopped down on top of the comforter and grabbed the pamphlet, which had a picture of the Amity Station on the cover and the words Amity Station 2 beneath it. Missy flipped it open to the first page.
Welcome, Amity Citizen, to your new temporary home.
You are based out of Amity Station 2, the station for the United States and Canada. There are three stations in total, each equipped similarly to yours. Station 1 holds the United Kingdom and Japan. Station 3 holds India and Russia. Each station has the capacity to hold 5,000 people. There are shuttles that run to the different stations daily, and you are free to travel as you please.
Amity orbits Greu 9b. There are twelve exoplanets in the Greu 9 system. Although not inhabitable, these planets contain resources that are used to fuel our stations.
Your Amity Station is equipped to withstand life for up to 100 years by utilizing the most advanced technology mankind has to offer. Similar to the gravity-activated ship that you arrived on, we increase the mass on the station so that walking on Amity is the same as walking back on Earth. In addition, Amity Station runs on inertia to stay energy efficient. This setup allows us to provide a seamless experience without any interruptions. If you would like to experience a zero gravity environment, head up to the top floor. There are many other amenities on board, and you can find them on page eight.
Life on Amity Station is designed to reflect life on Earth. Everyone is assigned a job detail, and children attend school. The cylindrical core of our station holds the dining halls, shops, lounge areas, exercise rooms, medical clinics, and other necessities, along with amenities. Closed-off sections keep our exploratory ships, equipment needed to run this station, reserves, livestock, and food gardens. Only citizens with specified access may enter restricted areas.
The Amity Stations do not use currency. All citizens receive the same amount and type of necessities. Identification is tracked through our AI system and amisow. Please visit a medical clinic on floors five or fourteen to have your amisow implanted. When you leave your room, you will not be able to reenter until you do so.
Again, welcome to Amity Station 2. Please keep this guide close so that you may reference it as you become acclimated to your new temporary home.
Missy flipped through the remaining pages until she arrived at a small loose-leaf piece of paper that stated, Missy Wild, teacher, Elementary – 2nd grade, Room 397. She wanted to smile but couldn’t. The feeling wasn’t there. Nothing felt right without Don. It was as if a part of her was missing. Why had she told him to go? She didn’t understand what it meant then, but the guilt was there nonetheless. Her eyes started to water, and she wiped at them. Not now. Keep it together, she thought.
Underneath her room details, she found Don’s name. Donald Wolf, Exploratory Astronaut. Missy crumpled the paper and threw it on the floor. She couldn’t control the tears as they flooded her vision. She thought about the words, “temporary home.” The setup did not feel temporary to her—everything was too well produced and coordinated. This felt like a forever home to her. A forever home without Don.
She lay down on the bed, trying to rid her mind of those thoughts, but they kept surfacing. She didn’t want to be here without Don. It didn’t feel right. Above all, she needed to find out what really happened to him. Was he a left-behind on Earth? Did he make it to the secret bunker? Was he stranded out in space, alone and thinking of her? She couldn’t move on until she knew for sure. Her thoughts jumbled; her eyelids grew heavy.
I’ll sort it out tomorrow, she thought. At least I know I have that.
– 28 –
Life
Sherrie rolled over and pulled a knitted blanket over her head to shield her eyes from the bright lights. She remembered the grainy cloud from the boy and Chris pulling her up. Then there was darkness and a waterfall lined with jasmine, followed by the words safe and ambassador. She could still smell the jasmine in the air. It was refreshing and comforting. A brief view of heaven, letting her know that everything would be fine. She felt whole again, all of the ailments of her life now a minor scar. There was a tomorrow, and somehow Sherrie knew she would live to see it.
She pulled off the blanket and sat upright in the bed, taking a moment to figure out where she was. She stretched out her arms in front of herself, then retracted them, staring at her hands. Her short nails were no longer yellow and brittle; instead they were a healthy, strong pink. Although her arms were still thin, her skin was smooth and silky to the touch. She thought of the children’s condition, the ones who seemed to recover, who she moved to a separate room. I
t didn’t make sense. She knew there was a link, but she couldn’t connect it yet. She was different—already ill—but the children were well and then became ill. Then some became well again, and some never woke up.
She wanted to dive deeper into the purpose of L8, but the rumblings of her stomach switched her mind to thoughts of food. She looked over at Chris, who was sound asleep on the couch, a brief snore occasionally breaking the silence. She smiled, admiring his determination and care. Those were not traits she often saw in people, even in the medical field. He was a pure soul in her mind, always willing to help, ready to sacrifice for the greater good. She owed her life to him, and she would never forget his act of heroism at Greenwood. Gently, she laid the blanket on top of him, careful not to wake him.
Jeremy was not in the room, and Sherrie concluded he must be on the floor making his rounds. Seeing him had brought back a lot of memories that she wanted to forget, but now she welcomed them. She had been afraid of letting him see her so unwell; she never wanted to be his burden. She smiled as she thought of their late nights in her high-rise condominium, the bright lights of the Houston Medical Center shining through the curved full-pane windows of her living room, the thick burgundy drapes pulled back.
They would have wine, lots of red wine, and a cheese spread. After an entire bottle was consumed, he would uncork another one, and they would stare off into the skyline, making up stories of what the people were doing in buildings far away. Sherrie always had a vivid imagination and would come up with the wildest stories—murder mysteries and a lover’s spat.
“You should write these down,” Jeremy would say.
“But only you would read them,” she would reply with a soft chuckle.
Sherrie’s stomach grumbled again, and she felt so hungry that she could vomit. As quietly as possible, she opened the drawers in Jeremy’s desk, searching for food. He always kept a bag of trail mix for snacking. She would often visit and grab a handful between patients. When Sherrie reached for the last drawer, her nausea overcame her. She leaned back in the chair and placed her hand over her mouth in an attempt to subdue the feeling, but it was overwhelming. She grasped her knee and, unable to control herself, vomited into the bin. She froze. In the bin was a small spew of thick brown chunks and small round barb-like clusters the width of nickels. “Oh God,” she said, wiping her mouth.
She looked up to see if she had disturbed Chris, but he was still sound asleep. Sherrie grabbed an open bottle of water from Jeremy’s desk and poured it into her mouth. She swished it around, making sure to get rid of all the sickness, and then spat into the waste bin. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she whispered to herself.
Reluctantly, she pulled a pen and a tissue from Jeremy’s desk and pulled one of the small barbs out from the trash, setting it on the tissue. She poked at its thin needles with the pen. It reminded her of a burr that would catch onto her socks as a kid when she would play in a field. This burr did not respond to the pokes, even when she flipped it over.
“Fascinating,” she whispered. “So you must be L8. But you’re so big.” Her stomach growled, and she felt disgusted. How can I be hungry after that? she thought. The hunger began to make her dizzy, and she opened the last drawer of Jeremy’s desk but found it empty.
The office door creaked open, and Sherrie looked up to find Jeremy carrying a large tray with two small plates of food covered in saran wrap. Quickly, she put the burr wrapped in the tissue in her lab coat pocket.
“Sherrie. You’re up,” he whispered. Sherrie placed an index finger to her lips, and Jeremy carefully set down the tray on the bed before rushing toward her. “You…you look better. How do you feel?”
Sherrie smiled. “I feel better. What’d you bring to eat? I’m starving.”
Jeremy knelt by her chair and ran his hands along her cheeks. “I didn’t know what to do. I can’t believe this. So, L8 is airborne. You’re the first case of an adult contracting it that I’ve heard of. And the effects…they’re so different. I don’t under—”
“Can we talk about this after we eat? What did you bring?” Sherrie asked, pulling his hands away from her face.
Jeremy hesitated, then returned to the tray. “I didn’t know you would be up. I got chili mac. There wasn’t much to choose from. Rehydrated from the hospital reserves. Here, have mine. I can go back down later.”
Sherrie eyed the chili mac. “Are you sure?”
Jeremy nodded and handed her a plate. “Chris,” he called loudly. “Dinner’s here.”
Chris rolled over and then jumped out of bed. “You’re up!” he exclaimed.
“I’m up,” Sherrie replied, taking a huge spoonful of food. She continued to force the chili mac in her mouth, barely swallowing between bites.
Jeremy and Chris watched Sherrie finish her meal in disbelief. “Stop staring and eat,” she said.
Chris picked out a single macaroni noodle. “I just…I can’t believe how well you look.”
Jeremy stood and fumbled through one of his cabinets and pulled out a mirror from his shaving kit. He held it toward Sherrie, and she looked at her reflection. She nearly choked when she saw herself. Her eyes were no longer a faint yellow, now a bright, shining white, her face smooth, the bags under her eyes gone, along with the lines around the corners of her mouth.
“Wow,” she whispered. “I almost look how I did years ago.” She looked toward Chris’s uneaten plate. “May I?”
Chris pushed the plate toward Sherrie, but Jeremy pushed it back. “You’ll make yourself sick,” he said. “We need to talk about you.”
Sherrie frowned. “I know my limits. And I want that chili mac, Jeremy. Hand it over.” She scooped a large helping of food into her mouth. “I don’t know where all this food is going, but I am so hungry.”
“So, how does an adult get L8?” Chris asked. “I thought it was only for children.”
Sherrie wanted to tell Chris and Jeremy about the burr but decided against it. She didn’t want to get their hopes up for nothing. Now that she was at the hospital, she had access to a lab. She would be able to find out what the burr was for herself.
“Okay, I’m good for now,” Sherrie said, setting down the empty plate. “Can we talk a little later? I just got up, and I don’t know what all of this means right now. Also, I need a little space to take all of this in.”
Jeremy nodded. “Sure, of course. I know it’s overwhelming. We didn’t mean to suffocate you, we just…”
Sherrie stood up and grabbed a mask from one of the open cabinets. “I get it,” she said, affixing the mask over her nose and mouth. As she headed toward the door, she looked back to find Jeremy and Chris still staring at her. She gently closed the door and then took off running toward the lab, her borrowed red clogs smacking the back of her feet with each step.
– 29 –
Burrs
Sherrie sat on one of the stools and positioned the burr under the magnifying glass. “What on earth,” she whispered as she rolled the burr over with tweezers, inspecting what she believed to be its mouth. She set down the tweezers and pushed the stool away from the lab table. So, she thought, it grew while inside of me. But what from? Sherrie pulled a scalpel from one of the lab drawers, and while holding the burr steady with the tweezers, she cut into its center. Blood and a white substance erupted onto the table from the thin slit.
“Dr. Dressner, are you okay?” Chris called from the doorway. “I thought you were going to take a walk or something. What are you doing?”
Sherrie set down the scalpel and waved for him to join her. She then pulled one of the stools near her. “Take a seat,” she said, and he obliged. “Jeremy is always a worrier. I didn’t want him to panic. I threw up earlier. This thing.” She pointed to the burr on the table, and Chris leaned forward, then quickly sat back. Sherrie pulled the magnifier in front of him, and he looked into it, viewing an up-close version.
“What…what is that?” he asked. “Is that from the smoke cloud? It was grainy, not that big. Also
, the kid who infected you, he had brown bits just like the cloud seep into his IV bag.”
Sherrie nodded. “I believe it’s all related. Would you be my assistant again while I try to figure this out?”
“Yes, of course,” he replied. “Just tell me what to do.”
Sherrie walked over to one of the cabinets in search of needles. She pulled out a few, along with alcohol wipes, vials, and a tourniquet. She placed the equipment down and then looked toward the refrigerator, where the blood samples of the children were kept. Randomly, she grabbed one vial and placed it on the table. “You are the constant, since you’ve been unaffected, or at least I believe you are. Then we will test my blood, a random child’s, and this little critter. I have a theory.”
“What’s your theory?” Chris asked, twirling one of the vials in his hands.
“My immune system was weak, and the L8 healed me. The children’s immune systems are strong, and they’ve fought it. Maybe so much that it’s killing them, like they are rejecting these critters, if they are indeed the L8. If this is true, then it would mean that if we suppress their immune systems and allow the L8 to nest, they will recover.”
“I get it,” Chris said. “But what about the kids at the school? The ones that got better?”
“Maybe those kids already had compromised immune systems. And maybe the survival rate is much lower than we thought if we subtract the previously ill ones. It’s just a theory, which I am sure could lead to other theories.” Sherrie opened one of the alcohol pouches and swabbed near the crook of her elbow. She then passed the tourniquet to Chris. “Tighten it around my arm. You need two vials.”
